TelOne announces backhaul fibre availablility for operators & companies

TelOne, the state owned and Zimbabwe’s sole fixed telecoms company announced today the availability of backhaul transmission facilities for leasing to other telecoms operators, government institutions, private companies and NGOs. According to the announcement, the backhaul connections are available on the SDH interfaces and IP Ethernet interfaces.

The units of bandwidth announced are the following:

• STM 1 (155 Mbps)
• STM 4 (620 Mbps)
• STM 16 (2.5 Gbps)
• Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps)
• Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps)

We don’t have it confirmed but we assume they can also provide smaller units to companies.

TelOne, earlier this year completed laying a fibre cable along the Harare – Bulawayo highway and in the process connected all cities and towns in between. The capacity of the cable is 10Gbps. TelOne is reportedly now working a cable linking Bulawayo to Victoria Falls and another to Beitbridge. The Beitbridge cable will further connect undersea fibre cable system in South Africa. As you may know, the company also has a fibre cable running from Harare to Mutare for onward connection through Mozambique to the EASSy undersea fibre cable system.

Along with PowerTel, a state owned Internet Access Provider, and Liquid Telecom, a private player and subsidiary of Econet Wireless International, TelOne has one of the most expansive terrestrial fibre cable networks in the country. The company also currently offers the least expensive broadband internet services via its ADSL service, which it has a monopoly on.